Outside of the "cult of Mac", people aren't really convinced on a $1000 laptop-ish device, on which apps are only allowed to run after passing an anal probe from the app store review team.
Which is why Apple stopped reporting unit sales on devices
I for one am grateful for the extra scrutiny iOS apps get. I resent that desktop apps can basically reach into any part of my computer, take 20 seconds to close when I tell them to exit, prevent my computer from shutting down, hog all my resources when I'm not using them, actively steal focus if they decide, fail to run because of some "missing dependency", and do a half-assed job uninstalling themselves.
Tell you what: you seem to really resent the process so feel free to stop developing for the platform. There is a competing platform that has all the properties you espouse.
And there's even a natural experiment running on the Mac: there is an App Store like the iOS one and you can just download apps from the net. And guess what: users seem to prefer using the Mac App Store (which surprises me but, well, it's data).
Oh boy. Don't you think an actual, fair experiment would have to consist of two preinstalled app stores? "Apple taxed App Store" and "Free App Store", the former with $99 developer payments, a 30% tax and reviews, and the other a free-for-all (not using Apple's CDN, same sandboxing security model).
> There is a competing platform that has all the properties you espouse.
Thanks. This platitude was refreshingly insightful, and not obvious
> users seem to prefer using the Mac App Store.
Citation needed. Also, notarization is mandated by Apple, or the app isn't allowed to run. Guess what? The notarization certificate costs more than the Mac Store review (developer account).
Lastly, are you an Apple employee, or just a fanboy?
Remote work now is likely lower in productivity than normal-times WFH.
If a software company cannot adjust to remote delivery, albeit at lower than normal productivity, the rest of the economy has no hope.
I don't understand Google's decision here - I wish they simply predicted a longer than normal release cadence, versus none at all
I don't know what Google use, but a friend worked on a system some years ago that used a robotic "finger" to press on a phone touchscreen, for testing. This was for a mobile phone company (pre-Android/iPhone) to check their OS worked.
I wouldn't be surprised if even the best of those systems requires some human supervision.
> I don't understand Google's decision here - I wish they simply predicted a longer than normal release cadence, versus none at all
It's reasonable to not understand their decision, but it's also reasonable to give them the benefit of the doubt that they know what's best for their team and product (and in that order).
Googlers (like myself) are probably the least materially affected by COVID-19. We are well compensated and most aren't living paycheck to paycheck. We have great medical benefits. Our schedules are flexible and working from home is fairly feasible for most teams. Many are young enough to not have kids, or compensated well-enough to have a stay-at-home partner.
And technically, for many of us, working from home is fairly straightforward. Google already has much of that infrastructure in place. Many teams are already distributed across sites and used to working over email and VC. We all have laptops, etc. Some of us work on open source where it's trivial to have full access to source code when not on the corporate network.
Even so, my rough estimate is that my team is about 30% less effective right now. Like you say, it's not because working from home is hard. It's because staying focused on code during a global pandemic that will kill unknown people, is causing massive suffering for people who aren't as fortunate as we Googlers, and may lead to a depression the likes of which haven't been seen in a hundred years is really hard.
We're all trying to survive a monumentally catastrophic event with our health and wits intact the best way we know how. The history books are going to write about how millions low-risk young people self-quarantined to protect the older generation. They will remember the states and countries that suspended evictions and mortgages.
No one's going to give a damn that Chrome skipped a release or two. At the scale of shit the world is dealing with right now, it just doesn't matter.
> At the scale of shit the world is dealing with right now, it just doesn't matter.
There are different ways to cope with adversity. The "Keep calm and carry on" method is a contrasting formula, which applied to Chrome, would see maybe one release versus three or four, even in the midst of an adversity.
As much ubiquitous suffering as there is currently, the comfort of at least a (slower than usual) browser release can be a ray of hope in an otherwise bleak horizon. Heck, if my browser won't even update, forget fixing a massively multivariate system/problem like public health, or the economy.
Your/Google's self awareness of privilege is much appreciated. But if you really want to make a difference, a slower release cadence is much more uplifting than resigning to the virus.
They're also considering the impact on developers targeting Chrome and Chrome OS platforms[1], which is a welcome consideration.
Edit to add: this also has a follow-on effect of reducing the possibility that end users experience problems due to breaking changes or bugs, which is also important considering nearly everyone is depending on the internet at this time.
I don't understand. Regardless of COVID, they always need to consider the impact on developers.
Like I said in my previous comment, the newly remote Chrome team may be facing many unseen roadblocks, but I expect that to be a temporal window of delay, after which the team should resume shipping, albeit at a slower cadence due to reduced productivity compared to normal-times WFH.
We always consider the needs of developers, but we also tend to ask a lot of them (new perf, security, capabilities etc etc) in more normal situations, but I'd add this is a highented situation for all users and develers where everyone is requiring information and access to services like never before it makes sense to be very prudent in all of our rollouts.
Whilst I love NFC API, it's not critical at this moment where as ensure there are no (or as rew as possible) regressions is.
Wrapping up, it's a massive mix of needs right now from our own teams and users alike.
I want to say that I appreciate your team's decision and I especially appreciate your personal effort to answer questions here in public. I'm sure it's frustrating when people second guess important decisions during a stressful time. Just want you to know I (and I'm sure many others) see your effort and appreciate it.
> I don't understand. Regardless of COVID, they always need to consider the impact on developers.
Sure, but that impact might be somewhat more... impactful right now. This isn't that difficult. If you're a FB user, you probably saw last night nearly all of your friends reporting that their posts were being flagged as spam yesterday. That's because a bunch of people were sent home and the automated system took over. Staffs are being sent home and their ability to work effectively is reduced. The prospect of breaking changes and new bugs in the world's most popular web browser could put more strain on already strained teams that are struggling to keep up with both their current working environment and new challenges as they respond to the public health crisis. Removing that as a factor is a net benefit for those teams and for all of their users.
My ideal mix is either 80/20 or 60/40 remote/in-office. I have been 20/80 my entire career up to the CV outbreak (1 day WFH minimum every week).
I prefer 100% WFH to that, but I dislike not going to the office at all. This is my first time being 100% WFH for this long -- my previous max was a full week.
Italy has both universal health coverage and sick leave policies, but is still reeling with a 7% mortality rate [1] and crisis. Neither replaces good leadership and policy/decision making by public health officials, and certainly has ZERO effect on pandemics.
FYI, countries routinely provide free health care [2] during pandemics because it typically is an existential crisis for it's civil society and economy.
Please don't use such misleading figures. Spreading fear is dangerous. This number is known as a "naive case fatality rate", with the emphasis on naive. And you're even quoting just for one country - cherry-picking.
The UK CMO has said the mortality rate for COVID-19 is likely 1% or less.
Please, act responsibly. The situation is serious and difficult enough.
No one really knows how the number will turn out. There are factors that could push it down: lack of testing, lots of mild cases; and factors that could push it up: the disease takes a long time to either recover or succumb to, so many of those who will end up dying from it haven't died yet.
Resiliency of healthcare systems also clearly has a major impact. It might be well under 1% in a "first world" country where hospitals can keep up, and well over 10% in a "third world" country where they can't.
While a 7% mortality rate certainly isn't some kind of objective fact, it's unfortunately not out of the realm of possibility for us in a worst-case scenario where the healthcare system is completely inundated. It's better to face up to that possibility than downplay it even if it scares people, because we urgently need people to act so it doesn't get that bad. While I agree that people shouldn't fear-monger, it's far more irresponsible at this point to downplay the risk than to (arguably) overstate it.
The only person taking anything I said out of context is you. I've been very specific about the 7% estimate being unique to Italy, replete with a source. I've never claimed that to be the overall wordlwide mortality rate, so read before accusing someone.
> Please, act responsibly ..
I suggest you practice what you preach, and read someone else's well intentioned, informed opinion without attributing malice or intent to spread falsehoods.
Most of all, the false narrative that a universal health care system somehow handles pandemics any better is clearly being proven wrong in the case of Italy, which is what I was trying to point out
The article fails to ask the obvious next question: if this can potentially apply to much cheaper and instantaneous tests, maybe something ultrasound based? I'm not an expert on medical imagining, so can someone comment on ultrasounds' usefulness here?
Ultrasound has a ton of untapped utility and is a fantastic medical imaging modality. Like you said, the equipment is cheap and portable (can be pocket sized, even!). It’s near instantaneous, allowing you to image in real time. You can even measure blood flow velocity and see other physiology. (I could go on!)
But its great advantage over x-ray and CT, which is that it doesn’t use ionizing radiation, is also its greatest weakness. Ultrasound uses sound waves, of course, which unfortunately simply cannot travel very far in the body, and (critically) do not travel well across certain interfaces. One such interface is with air. Sound waves travel through your chest wall fine but on arriving at the lung... they just sort of fizzle out. Very little sound continues, and even less comes back to the transducer as meaningful signal.
So ultrasound is unfortunately very poor at seeing lung tissue. (It can show us some secondary findings of pulmonary disease in the lungs, such as fluid collecting in the thoracic cavity [a pleural effusion], but that’s yet another non-specific finding.)
Ultrasound actually has pretty good sensitivity for pneumonia (88%) and even higher if you look at the “difficult” cases requiring CT in the Cochrane review I link to below.
While the fundamentals of what you say are correct, consolidation by definition is the build up of fluid which is very well depicted by ultrasound. For a predominately peripheral airspace disease like COVID-19 ultrasound should theoretically be very sensitive.
Which is why Apple stopped reporting unit sales on devices